Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.

1. 1IM
   I made a book with a hundred UI/UX tips▲198

   Hello. This year I dived into UI/UX area and at the same time I work as a web developer. I sincerely love making good UI. But at my full time job it's not always possible due to different reasons =\ So I've been posting random UI/UX staff on Twitter, then I made a free book that had 50 tips (posted it here as well). I decided to finish this year by collecting everything I learned and here it is: https://akcium.gumroad.com/l/ui-ux-tips. This time it's a paid one. But, you can check ~20 pages of it, just go to…

   2021 · its alternatives →

2. 2
   ReadHere▲146

   Lightweight PDF & EPUB reader in your browser

   Jun 2026 · readhere.app · its alternatives →

3. 3AW
   A WebPDF Reader with AI assistance, for research and studying▲7

   Hey, I've made a pdf reader with ai assistance, you can quickly ask questions about the text and the images, and it will have context about all of your reading material so you can ask questions freely, try it now, I'm in open beta to find bug and get feedback. upcoming features: - Highlighting - Highlighting with Notes - Bibliography - Automatic Reference file opening - Improved UX and robustness currenlty alot of bugs so please let me know if you found any. feedback appreciated

   2025 · pdf-hub.com · its alternatives →

4. 4HN
   Hacker News clone for books▲10

   I love books! I had once come across a great list of book recommendations on the LessWrong website ("The Best Textbooks on Every Subject"). But when I had stumbled upon the list a couple of years ago the last comments and recommendations on it were from 2011. And similarly I found that most recommendations on the web suffer from this form of time decay. What I wanted was a site that had high quality recommendations similar to the LessWrong list that would feel fresh and current. Amazon was overwhelming for me since it has a gazillion books on each subject and the "Thanks! Arrived in good…

   2015 · its alternatives →

5. 5IM
   I made an open-source publishing platform (with minimal JavaScript)▲41

   2021 · zentrum.alles.cx · its alternatives →

6. 6
   A beautiful and local-first PDF reader for studying dense things▲6

   Recently, I found myself having to read the book "C++ primer" and I just couldn't do it. Maybe my attention span is too little now with Claude and Codex, maybe I'm lazy... but I just couldn't get myself to focus. While reading, I needed something to do. I wanted to talk to the text, I wanted to leave notes, I wanted to use to use my keyboard to quickly flip through pages. The only good available option on a Mac was "Preview" and it was ok, but definitely not there. So I built Quincy primarily for myself. With it you can - "Talk" to the page you're reading, create a quiz about the page, and…

   Jun 2026 · tryquincy.live · its alternatives →

7. 7
   I wrote a book about Clojure▲7

   Hey HN, I wrote a short book about the fundamental aspects of Clojure. The target audience is programmers with at least minimal experience who want to learn how to express solutions in Clojure (and perhaps in LISP, generally). If the price is a bit too steep for you, send me an email (address in bio), and I'll provide a discount coupon. If you can't afford it all, and believe the material may help you for studying or interview preparations, I can send you a free copy.

   2025 · leanpub.com · its alternatives →

8. 8UU
   UI/UX Primer is a free eBook with 150+ topics▲8

   I'm launching a free UI/UX primer ebook for people who want to start learning about user interface design and user experience development. Thank you to many HN readers who suggested topics a couple weeks ago. Constructive feedback is welcome. https://github.com/sixarm/ui-ux-primer

   2023 · its alternatives →

9. 9
   DIY ePub Reader▲24

   An ESP32 e-reader. Contribute to atomic14/diy-esp32-epub-reader development by creating an account on GitHub.

   2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

10. 10
    Open-sourced my minimalistic home dashboard▲6

    Hi HN! I've just published my small home dashboard project on Github. Hope you like it too and perhaps find it useful as a reference for similar ideas. Overall I'm very happy with the LilyGo e-ink device and I'll probably add a bunch of other features in the future.

    2023 · github.com · its alternatives →

11. 11
    I made a (self-hosted) Website Builder▲7

    Hey Hacker News, I'm the maker of Kopage, a free & self-hosted Website Builder. While working on new, cool features (AI, of course), it would be great to hear some HN feedback :) Thanks, Simon

    2024 · kopage.com · its alternatives →

12. 125A
    50books, a bare-bones reading list tracker▲9

    Hey everyone! I wanted to share a project that I've been working on the last few days that I finally finished last night: https://50books.org This is a simple site designed to track your reading list into 2015. My personal goal is to read 50 books this year, and I wanted to hold myself accountable. Major sites like Goodreads are great, but were too much of a social network for my personal taste; on the other hand, using a text file (which was my 2014 solution) was too difficult to track and share. I built https://50books.org using Sinatra, sqlite3 (via datamapper), and…

    2015 · its alternatives →

13. 13AF
    A free private journaling app▲9

    https://github.com/inoda/private_journal Built this to use myself, and I'm curious if anybody would be interested in using it. I'm also wondering if anybody has tips to make it more secure (I'm super super new to encryption and whatnot). The security is probably a bit overkill since chances are that nobody cares about what I'm journaling, but it is fun to implement from a code standpoint.

    2019 · its alternatives →

14. 14MW
    My Weekend Project - Sending a blog to your Kindle▲9

    Over the weekend I wrote a small web app that takes an RSS feed for a blog, grabs the feed, cleans up the HTML, strips out small irrelevant images and compiles them into an e-book with chapter anchors. It requires a Google login since it uses the Google Reader "API". As an example, I was going on a long vacation and had recently discovered Paul Buchheit's blog. I used this tool (which was then just a Python script) to create an e-book and I literally read his blog "cover to cover". It's still rough around the edges, but I figured I'd iron those out if at least one other person thinks they…

    2011 · blog2kindle.com · its alternatives →

15. 15
    booksofme▲2

    try booksofme and show-off your readings.

    Jan 2026 · booksofme.com · its alternatives →

16. 16IW
    I wrote an eBook on Linux CLI tools and Shell Scripting▲7

    Hello! This ebook aims to teach Linux command line tools and Shell Scripting for beginner to intermediate level users. The main focus is towards managing your files and performing text processing tasks. Includes plenty of examples, exercises (200+) and solutions. To celebrate my latest ebook release, you can download PDF/EPUB versions of Computing from the Command Line for FREE till 08-Nov-2022: https://learnbyexample.gumroad.com/l/cli_computing (the web version linked as the post url is always free) All books bundle (all my 13 programming ebooks) is $10 (normal…

    2022 · learnbyexample.github.io · its alternatives →

17. 17AI
    An immersive, social reading app for book nerds▲5

    This is a first draft of an app that I am working on that is the "anti blinkist (the book summarization app)". I call it Augre (aug-ur - short for augmented reader) and the whole idea is that I want to immerse more, not less in a book. I want to dive deeper into the text, chat with others who are reading the book and get into delicious discussions. It's still early but here are a couple of features: 1. A really solid cross platform epub reader 2. Left sidebar which augments the reading experience with tables, images, maps (and other artifacts coming soon) 3. Book chat where you can chat with…

    2025 · its alternatives →

18. 18
    I built a minimal open-source CMS (FREE)▲6

    I built a minimal opensource CMS, I use it myself for my blog and for other SaaS. l love blogging, and sometimes I post random thoughts on my blog. The only thing is, I always did it with .md files, which is fine too However, I was excited about the idea of using a CMS that was very minimal and avoiding the option of connecting something like WordPress or other big platforms. Open source (if you want to fork it or contribute) and free to use (unless I see you have a million views haha). Star the repo if you like it!

    Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

19. 19
    ThinkTotem▲12

    Hi HN, I love reading non-fiction, but I kept catching myself skimming, zoning out, and forgetting most of what I’d “read”. To fix that I built ThinkTotem, a small web app that lets you upload a PDF/EPUB/article/YouTube link and then chat with the material until you actually understand it. What it does - Ingests PDFs, EPUBs, Word docs, plain-text URLs and even YouTube transcripts (≤ 4 MB for now) - Maps key ideas, trims filler and surfaces the essential concepts automatically - Runs an active-recall loop: Socratic questions, explain-it-back prompts, spaced-repetition style…

    2025 · thinktotem.com · its alternatives →

20. 20FO
    Feedback on my ebook landing page▲6

    I've just launched a landing page for an ebook that I hope to have out sometime in June but I feel like that dog in the meme "I have no idea what I'm doing."[1] I am not a designer (or copywriter) but I've been hanging out on HN long enough to have a good idea where to go for help. I used Bootstrap[2] for a template, Colour Lovers[3] for a palette and Weebly's homepage[4] for inspiration. Weebly's homepage is fantastic but as much as I tried to keep it simple and powerful, like Weebly, I kept getting bogged down in massive amounts copy. I think this is probably where I need to most help.…

    2012 · startupprivacy.com · its alternatives →

21. 21E
    ExcaliHub▲9

    Hello everyone, A couple of months ago I was introduced to Excalidraw and fell in love with it instantly. The only thing I didn't like was that I couldn't easily save my whiteboards and had to put everything in one whiteboard which started to lag my PC after a while. So I made ExcaliHub. It's exactly as it sounds: a hub for Excalidraw. It's free, open source, and I aim to keep it that way. Thanks in advance for any feedback!

    2024 · excalihub.dev · its alternatives →

22. 22
    DIY Notebook - Reading & Writing-Hack▲11

    Enhance your reading and journaling habits with a 1$ hack

    2024 · philwornath.gumroad.com · its alternatives →

23. 23
    MyRead▲10

    Hi HN! I'm Ivan, a developer and avid reader who was constantly frustrated by the "what to read next?" problem after finishing a great book. I tried tracking books on my phone, but it felt clunky and unreliable—I worried about losing my data when switching devices. When I looked at existing online solutions, they felt overly complex and bloated for what should be a simple task. So I built MyRead: a fast, modern book tracker that's both private and persistent, running entirely in your browser. Core philosophy: your data belongs to you. Everything is stored exclusively in your browser's…

    2025 · myread.space · its alternatives →

24. 24WW
    Write webapps in Go without framework [updated]▲7

    Over three months ago, I posted my book on HN and got tremendous +ve reponse. I am happy to inform that I have published the book to leanpub as per the comments I got on HN itself! It is pay as you go model, and the minimum is $0 because I wanted to contribute back to the FOSS Community

    2016 · its alternatives →

Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →